He rushes over to me, throwing his keys somewhere in the process before perching next to me on the couch. Micah grabs my face, still with the tenderness he’s come to always touch me with, but also with that clinical efficiency that tells me he’s still in work mode and I’m not exactly helping him relax.
My face is tilted this way and that as he examines me, stopping occasionally to prod my bruises with his fingers. It stings, but I take the pain because I definitely fucking deserve it.
I wait for the questions to come, but they don’t. The first thing he says after a long silence is, “Anywhere else?”
Nodding, I take off my shirt to show him. There’s no point in hiding it from him.
He makes a grumbling noise when he sees the bruising over my ribs that would be adorable under any other circumstances, then continues his exam there too. More poking and prodding. Moving my arms and checking my range of motion. At some point he pulls the stethoscope off from around his neck to listen to my lungs, muttering under his breath that if I have a punctured lung, he’ll kill me himself first.
When he’s finally, finally satisfied that I’m not dying he sits back to look at me, although his hand continues to rest on my knee. It’s a single point of contact, but I let it tether me to the earth. It’s selfish, but I need it.
“Tell me what happened. At least as much of it as you can,” he says. His eyes are round and wide with some unreadable emotion, and I immediately feel yet more guilty that I’m making him feel this way.
“What happened?” I ask.Do you mean before or after I—a grown-ass man—let my father beat the shit out of me?“It was Patrick. You know how he gets.”
Micah sighs, and it seems to sink his entire bodyweight into the couch.
“I’m sorry. Was it about us?”
“No,” I lie. At least, it’s not about the part of us he’s asking about. “It was bullshit work stuff. He just lost his temper, and I didn’t want to make it worse.”
“That’s it?”
He looks so open. So willing to take me as I am. I almost want to tell him the truth. The whole truth about what I did. I can’t, though. He asked me for one fucking thing, and I couldn’t even give him that.
Instead of pushing me to answer him, Micah takes my silence as an answer in itself.
With more patience than I knew he had in him, Micah helps pull me up and get me ready for bed. It’s late. Sometime in the middle of the night, I think. At some point he shoves some toast at me, which I eat mechanically. Then water, which I drink.
By the time I’m in bed with him curled around me like a protective buffer between me and the world, I can practically feel his concern vibrating off him. There’s nothing I can do about it, though.
I can’t tell him what I did. I can’t tell him what’s going to happen to us. And I can’t even pretend that everything is going to be okay.
Eamon doesn’t even turnaround when I shimmy open the lock and let myself into the motel room I finally found him in. He’s at the small Formica table next to the A/C unit, his gun spread out in front of him in pieces while he picks up each part to clean it.
This isn’t a dream. Not exactly. I don’t think I’m asleep enough for it to be a dream, because the details are all too sharp. It’s just a fresh, raw memory playing itself in my mind over and over, refusing to let me sink any deeper than this into rest.
“It took you long enough, pet. I was beginning to think I’d have to come out and catch you again. The clock is ticking until I put your little bartender buddy in the ground, remember.”
Ah. So, he’s expecting Tobias back. That’s why he’s not on his guard.
Lucky me.
There’s only six feet or so between us, and I cover the distance quickly and silently. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this, and it feels like so much of me has changed since then that even my cells have probably shifted in how they function.
Apparently, I was wrong. Nothing’s changed. My body takes over, remembering exactly what to do. Even though I’m still stiff from my own beating. Colm had picked me up and cleaned me with his sad, sympathetic eyes and surprisingly tender hands, and then I was ready to do my job.
Eamon still doesn’t know what’s happening when I grab the back of his skull with my hands and smash it into the table. Itcomes up bloody, because the trigger assembly was right under his face and cut straight through the skin of his forehead.
He normally looks slick. He’s kind of pretty, but it never fits with the reptilian look in his eyes. Now, with blood rushing down over his nose and mouth, it looks more like his external self matches his internal existence.
I like it.
He’s shocked for a few moments, but his training kicks in just like mine would and has him reaching for whatever other weapon he has tucked in his pants. I don’t give him the chance, though. I’m operating on muscle memory. There’s no hesitation in me right now. I’m a relentless, violent machine.
I kick the chair legs out from under him, sending him tumbling to the ground, and immediately step on his right wrist. The toe of my work boot grinds into his forearm hard, and I take great satisfaction in the cracking, popping sounds that I hear right before he screams.
Conveniently, he chose the best possible motel for no one giving a fuck if they hear screaming, as well as the room farthest from the office. Thanks for the assist, Eamon.
